What Board Game have you been playing? ARCHIVE

So we played Monopoly City last night. It's pretty fun....but it's still Monopoly.

Aarontu wrote:
[/quote]The cones look cool, but I originally bought the BI version and later got the upgrade kit, which doesn't include the cones, but I don't mind; I actually like the little stat pieces that came with the BI version. There's so many of them that I just use them all as "1", and I can stick them on weapons/objects/followers that add to your stats, too. The FFG version doesn't have nearly that many cones.[/quote]

That's not a bad idea counting them all as 1's. Most of the time I'm playing Talisman as a 2 - 3 player game anyway so there's plenty of counters. I just hate getting change all the time. And when you have to put out a fountain of wisdom or some thing else on the board, I have to look through 20 counters to get get 3 x 1's. I like the idea of putting the 1's on the Allies and Weapons to make adding up stats quick. Cool ideas, Thanks.

Day #1 of WBC - War of Ring. I'm bumping up my rating of War of the Ring to a perfect 10. This is one of my 5 favorite games.

Day #2 of WBC - C&C Overlord. C&C and M44 are a blast playing 4 on 4 team battles.

A while ago I picked up Runebound 2nd and Return of the Heroes in trades, so I recently conducted my own solo taste-test of this classic Trashdome battle . I have to side with Barnes and the ROTH winners... Runebound seemed very tedious with its movement and combat and all of the little card text, and I put it up for sale/trade immediately thereafter (with Sands of Al Kalim, if anyone's interested). ROTH was quirky and a little bit odd in some ways, but much more fun. It reminds me of a lighter and goofier version of Arkham Horror where the missions/tasks are included and there's a wimpy GOO, and although I don't think I'll have much interest in continuing to play it solitaire (as compared to AH), playing through it solo made me realize that it would probably be pretty fun to play competitively. And being a relatively short pick-up-and-deliver focused Euroish game, I can probably even get some of my local game group folks to play it (which wouldn't be as likely with Runebound). I have no doubt that Runebound may be the game with more long-term depth, but ROTH just seems a lot more enjoyable to play out of the box. So though my vote is no longer counted, I have to agree that the victor in that Trashdome battle was justified.

Otherwise, I've been playing a lot of this website dice game called Expedition, which is vaguely in the spirit of a game like Source of the Nile: www.history.com/expedition/game/ I'm a sucker for dice games that have any kind of theme and narrative goal to them (as opposed to just getting the most points, although Expedition has that as well), and this is a great one, IMO. Along the same lines, I also like this free print-and-play game: Delve the Dice Game

Before you give up on Runebound you should try the Sands of Al-Kalim, which adds a nice questing element and other improvements. Except play it with other people as the game was intended. Solitaire taste-testing of multi-player board games is fucking lame.

Mad Dog wrote:

Solitaire taste-testing of multi-player board games is fucking lame.

Not when that's one of the ways I intend to play the game, and when, in Runebound's case, so many people recommended it for its solo capability. And also not when so many people describe Runebound as multi-player solitaire... So what's not to appreciate from trying it out solo?

But yeah, I do hope to play it with Sands of Al Kalim at least once, but I'm just not enamored enough with the system to invest much energy in making that happen right now, and won't care too much if it ends up trading or selling before then.

Last week, played TotAN, Dinos of the Lost World, QuackShot, and Splish Splash! with Barnes and MooFrank.

Tales: in spite of all the page-flipping, it was a fun game. Is there much you can do to affect the outcome of anything? If there is, I didn't figure it out. Good times, though.

DotLW: Was really fun at first, but then it just seemed to drag and get really repetative. Part of this may be that we weren't really looking at what adventures we had the specific tools for and then just doing those adventures (I wasn't, anyway). I think we were all running out of ammo and Barnes drew a bad event just about every turn, it seemed (he only had 2 VP when we stopped playing after an hour and 45 min or so). The chase track was awesome, though! I suppose it would be easy to make this game shorter by simply playing to less VP or doubling all VP rewards or something (I'm sure the game would go faster if we knew what we were doing, though).

QuackShot: An interesting dexterity game. Simple and elegant in mechanics and victory conditions. Has a nice catch-up mechanism wherein your own animals become easier to target as you knock out more of your opponents' animals. It has player elimination, though. Play time: 1 minute.

Splish Splash!: The worst kids game I've ever played; seriously! BUT IT'S ALL GOOD BECAUSE IT HAS WATER! It even has this little spinny piece whose only purpose is to flick water all over the table!

generalpf wrote:

Played Age of Napoleon, which sucked, am currently reading the rules to the old AH game Wizards which I borrowed from my father-in-law. It looks terrific.

Let me know what you think of Wizards when you get a game or two in. I picked this up a few weeks back at a game auction for a fair price but it has been placed in the stack of "sometime down the line" games.

LvT

Aarontu wrote:

Tales: in spite of all the page-flipping, it was a fun game. Is there much you can do to affect the outcome of anything? If there is, I didn't figure it out. Good times, though.

My thoughts exactly. Everything basically feels like it is out of your hands so you pick actions arbitrarily. But it sure is amusing to read the results.

metalface13 wrote:

Aarontu wrote:

Tales: in spite of all the page-flipping, it was a fun game. Is there much you can do to affect the outcome of anything? If there is, I didn't figure it out. Good times, though.

My thoughts exactly. Everything basically feels like it is out of your hands so you pick actions arbitrarily. But it sure is amusing to read the results.

My favorite part of the game was when someone else came upon the "Spring of Sex-Change". "Drink" wasn't an option on the response matrix, though. She didn't want to drink from it so she chose "examine".

The corresponding paragraph in the book started out, "As you drink from the spring..."

LOL

I had plans to play Mare Nostrum, Imperial and Neuroshima Hex with Babel 13, but they fell through. Instead I ended up sitting down to Modern Art (I always like this game), and two new games: Railroad Tycoon (Railroads of England map/expansion) and Confucius. I really likd the railroad game: it was fast, accessible, and competitive.

Confucius is pure euro, but a bit weird. There are a few different ways to get VPs, and each player takes turns spending actions pursuing one of those ways. Some folks concentrate on one VP path, others diversify. But inevitably there is competition. The twist is that the competition gets resolved by gift exchanges. Each player can buy a gift and give it to another player, at which point that other player becomes indebted and may not outdo the gift giver in certain contests, and must side with the gift giver against other players. But there are ways to cancel gifts (eg give a nicer gift). The layers of who was indebted to whom got quite thick and a bit hard to follow. It was interesting and thematic, but the interaction was quite indirect and the game felt a bit restrained.

Yesterday:

TOI, the Nromandy campaign stuff, I'm getting screwed as the Germans but I love the game so far. The Bunkers may be mean but the explosive charges that the American's get can do some serious damage if they get in close. I really like the veterancy that the American's get and I'd like to see more done with the campaign rules in further expansions.

A Touch of Evil: Scarcrow was the baddie and I think I'm liking this game (competitive mode) more each time I play. It plays well 2-4 players and is light, fun, and fast. I may still pick up the expansion when it come to town.

Carrom: Maybe my favorite dex game (along with Crokinole, a family favorite for us) this game is to Crokinole what Snooker is to Billiards. It is crazy hard and many very cool shots are possible, the strategy is simple but variable and the board is fun. There are a number of Indian families here in Vancouver and I quite often see a father and sun sitting on the front lawn playing Carrom over an old milk crate. If anyone here likes dex games like Crokinole I highly, highly reccomend picking up a carrom table. Great with beers too.

Just got back from Holidays where we played Cuththroat Caverns, Galaxy Trucker, Dominion (with Intrigue), and Bausack (Sac Noir edition) to death. All light games the family could pick up easy (except Galaxy Trucker), don't think I'll play any of these again soon. Got more Age of Conan coming up this weekend ( I like it) with Orc Wars (haven't played it yet) and Arctic Scavengers (one play only) happening this week at lunch time.

Day #3 of WBC. I got off of work about 3:00 drove up to WBC and met up with Dogmatic at the auction. I hung out and watched people pay rediculous amounts of money to buy war games.

Dogmatic, Big Bien and me played Dogmatic's $65.00 auction copy of Atlantic Storm. Then me and Dogmatic played Battle Cry while Big Bien and American Megafuna Dan played American Megafuna.

(And don't ban me Uba from F:AT) but I finished the day with the CAYLUS tournment baby and I have to say "KingPut is back". I won my heat to move onto the semi-finals on Thursday.

KingPut wrote:

Day #3 of WBC. I got off of work about 3:00 drove up to WBC and met up with Dogmatic at the auction. I hung out and watched people pay rediculous amounts of money to buy war games.

Dogmatic, Big Bien and me played Dogmatic's $65.00 auction copy of Atlantic Storm. Then me and Dogmatic played Battle Cry while Big Bien and American Megafuna Dan played American Megafuna.

(And don't ban me Uba from F:AT) but I finished the day with the CAYLUS tournment baby and I have to say "KingPut is back". I won my heat to move onto the semi-finals on Thursday.

And if it weren't for Troll & fucking Toad, that would have been a $45 or $50 copy of Atlantic Storm....@#4@#$@#$@#$~!

I really appreciately y'all indulging me in a round of AS. I really can't decide if I'm going to just pick up the GMT version ("Pacific Typhoon") and flip this one at Xmas or hang on to it. Kaiser's Pirates and Pacific Typhoon may combine perfectly well to scratch the same itch that this one does...

[And Battle Cry was great fun, even though I got stomped by a freakin' CAYLUS champion--I need to get a scan of that "Origins/GenCon 2000 bonus scenario" set that Megafauna Dan had in the box. The Battle of Winchester was one of the more entertaining rounds of BattleCry I've ever played].

Speaking of Battle Cry--it was FRED/Eagle that is looking at doing the reprint. Probably a 2010 release, but here's the news: www.boardgamenews.com/index.php/boardgam...tober_25_2008_day_4/

I played three rounds of Dragon Dice. It was a grinder but my Coral Elves beat the Amazons twice. Then my Lava Elves walked all over the Goblins. Those Amazons are tough to beat, it's hard to stop them completely controlling the battlefield with their massive maneuver rolls.

Then we played a two-player game of Buffy, the Season 1 scenario. Oz quickly found the Mark of the Anointed artifact and managed to trade it to Willow before his first werewolf transformation. Spike was the first to go as Buffy laid the smack down on him. The Master found an artifact that gave him two extra attack dice, he smacked Buffy around for quite a few turns and managed to sire Xander into a vampire. I managed to summon Kathy the Demon Roommate after Darla was killed, and later brought out Veruka the werewolf. When the moon changed Veruka hauled across town and ripped Buffy to shreds. She may be a vampire slayer, but Buffy was dog meat.

metalface13 wrote:
" I played Race for the Galaxy online for a great portion of the day yesterday. You don't need to try and make up for it with Fortress America. Just own it. And don't listen to Barnes, he just voted for Shogun for pete's sake!"
I wasn't, I'll play almost anything. Amusingly (given this thread), the choices are usually made by someone else, and the AT/Euro/abstract/whatever ratio can fall as it may.

Grudunza wrote:
" A while ago I picked up Runebound 2nd and Return of the Heroes in trades, so I recently conducted my own solo taste-test of this classic Trashdome battle . I have to side with Barnes and the ROTH winners..."
WTF? You can't vote for a Trashdome in this thread! And I bet it's after the Friday close date. someone's bound to post an objection somewhere. I predict, it'll all end in tears...